Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

[see zis̲h̲towa ].

, a language extensively used on the coasdand of East Africa (< Ar. sawāḥil “coastiands”). 1. Language. Swahili, also known as Kiswahili, belongs to the Bantu family of languages which are spoken in the southern third of Africa, from Cameroon and Kenya to South Africa. The languages share striking features of grammar—all nouns, for example, belong to one of a number of concord-classes, with characteristic prefixes and agreements—and a considerable common lexicon. Swahili is spoken as a mother-tongue on the east coast of Africa, from the southern part of Somalia to t…

, a region of the North-West Frontier region of what is now Pākistān, lying roughly between lats. 34° 30′ and 35° 50′ N. and long. 72° and 73° E. It is bounded on the north-west by Čitrāl, on the west by Dīr, on the east by Bunēr and Hazāra and on the south by Mardān. It comprises essentially the basin of the Swāt River, from its headwaters down to the Malakand Pass, after which it runs into the Kabul River below Pes̲h̲awar and near Naws̲h̲ēra. The nor…

[see silhet ].

(also spelled as Ssŭ-ch’uan in the Wade and Si-chuan in the Pin-yin systems) is a province in the south-west of the People’s Republic of China. Geographically, the four grand rivers (Min, T’o, Chialing and Wu; three of them are tributaries of the Yangtze River) flowing north-southward give the modern name of Sze-chuan (meaning “four rivers”) to the province. The whole province is a huge basin, some 75,000 square miles in extent. The mountains on all sides bar easy access to the outside world. Th…

(Ottoman, Segedīn), a town and centre of a sand̲j̲aḳ in the Great Plain of Hungary, along the river Tisza. First mentioned in a 1183 charter, Szeged acquired town privileges in the 13th century and became a civitas (“free royal town”) in 1498. After being ransacked by the Ottomans in 1526 and by the Serbian militia of “Tsar” Yovan in 1527, it enjoyed peaceful years until 1541. Since the town had some ruinous remnants of a mediaeval castle only, it was unable to show resistance, and was easily taken by the Ottoman Pas̲h̲a of Buda early in 1543. A sand̲j̲aḳ was created immediately around Szege…

(Ottoman, Istōlnī/Ustōlnī Belg̲h̲rād [from Serbian stolni belgrad “white capital castie”]; German, Stuhlweiβenburg; Latin Alba Regia), a town and centre of a sand̲j̲aḳ in Transdanubia, Hungary, and one of the main royal and ecclesiastical centres from the time of St. Stephen (1000-38), where several kings were crowned and buried. Realising its strategic and spiritual importance in the Buda-Esztergom-Székesfehérvár triangle, the Ottomans took the town and its castle, which fell without considerable resistance, on 3 September, during the 1543 c…